My friend and fellow Screengrabber Scott Von Doviak gets nervous when he watches me play Grand Theft Auto, since I tend to skip the missions and just barrel-ass around Rockstar Games’ big, fake virtual cities in a variety of stolen cars, tanks and cement-mixers, randomly killing as many pedestrians as possible until some Vice City or San Andreas S.W.A.T. sniper puts me down like a rabid dog.
While this kind of videogame behavior may demonstrate uncomfortably revealing things about the darker corners of my id, I’ve never been a proponent of the “video games lead to violence” argument for one simple reason: just like online porn is a release valve (so to speak) for those who don’t have the time, skills, money and/or moral inclination to go out and get some actual sex, violent video games strike me as a fairly harmless method for polite, law-abiding citizens like myself to unleash our pent-up road rage and fury at all the bad drivers, asshole co-workers and neo-conservative Executive Branch turd blossoms we have to suffer in real life. If I were an actual sociopath, I’d be out doing real crimes and/or running for higher office instead of sitting around playing with my computer.
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